I hope you are right but the polls aren’t showing that
You may see record early turnout this year, but the Repubs have now endorsed early voting so it might not mean what you all think it does. But then it might. We can only hope.
Missouri has early voting for the first time this year and election officials have been overwhelmed by the turnout. But judging by the average wait times at the polling locations, the Republican areas of St. Louis County and St. Charles County, are getting heavier turnout than the solidly Democratic areas. It’s possible there’s a lot of Republican women voting for the abortion rights constitutional amendment, but Missouri has a history of voting for liberal ballot issues while electing Republican legislators who try to overturn them.
What polls are you looking at? Many are overcorrecting for Trump since they overshot last time. Some are openly in the tank for Trump, i.e. Rasmussen is posting Trumpy election conspiracy theories on its social media account.
Look at any set of polls you want. None are showing that. They all show basically a tossup. It is also too soon to tell if they are overcorrecting. Most have made adjustment to account for voters they missed in previous Trump elections, but we don’t know how successful those adjustments are yet.
To answer the question I think Arizona and Nevada flip back to red, but Harris wins North Carolina and holds on in the blue wall and Georgia.
Well, the reasonaing is that
- He is leading in most polls there,
- 2020 was an outlier in the recent history of Presidential elections, and
- We know Republicans will cheat.
So, to answer your question without non-facts,
- Georgia is likely, albeit not certain, to flip. That’s 16.
- Arizona is even more likely, albeit not certain, to flip. That brings us to 27.
So Trump needs 10 more electoral votes. There are three states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, that are very, very close, which if he wins any one of them, he wins the election. He has an excellent chance in Nevada, too, but it’s not enough by itself.
Conversely these is one one state Harris has a shot at flipping, and that’s NC. But these aren’t independent events. If she flips NC that means the polls had, if anything, a slight Trump bias, so if NC goes blue it won’t have to offset Pennsylvania anyway.
I’m not going to predict specific states flipping, because whether or not they do, and regardless of which ones (or none) flip, I think the causes are going to be the same. It’s just a matter of how much each cause applies to the specific population of each state
With that out of the way, here are some things that IMHO will not have had a major effect.
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The specific candidate. Even in a scenario in which Biden steps out before the primary and we end up with Gavin Newsom, Corey Booker, Jennifer Granholm, Mayor Pete, or someone else, I doubt that would have ended up moving the needle from wherever it eventually ends up.
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Democratic leaning voters staying home. I’m predicting that turnout this year will be higher than it was in the already high turnout 2020 election.
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The specific strategies and tactics used by the Harris campaign. If she loses, it won’t be because of a “she should have done this instead of that” type of scenario.
What will be the big deciders?
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Fake news, and how it’s become even more widespread compared to 2020, along with the increasing numbers of people who fall for it.
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The “angry young man” regardless of his race. IMHO the reason Trump is doing better among young men who are Black or Latino is the same reason he does well with young White men. It’s just that we’ve reached a point where race (for some) is taking a backseat consideration to the young man side of the equation. Young men, for whatever reason, are attracted to Trump’s “machismo” for lack of a better term. In the past, young men from a minority background would overlook that because their concerns about racism outweighed the attraction of a “macho” candidate (as well as the fact that in the past Republicans didn’t typically nominate “macho” candidates). Now a large segment of young men from minority backgrounds are looking at things in terms of being young men, with the minority part of their identity having little to do with how they consider their vote.
He’s been courting them. It’s the reason why he picked Vance as his VP; it was to appeal to the young male vote. He also has been having photo ops with young male “influencers” (often in the crypto/scam space) to show that he’s just a cool dudebro like they are.
I’m hoping that this is a bad demographic to target, and it won’t be nearly enough to counter the gains on the Democratic side, but we’ll see soon enough.
I’m nearing 50, so maybe I’m just out of touch with what being a “cryptobro” does for young men, or whatever else it is that makes a young man cool these days. Maybe this is the equivalent for the current generation of young men what Bill Clinton going on the Arsenio Hall Show and playing saxophone back in the day was for my generation.
I am also nearing 50, but I keep up because I follow and support an online investigator who does reports on online scammers, particularly in the crypto sphere (though he does a lot of MLM stuff too, in fact he got his start exclusively with MLM stuff). So I see who these guys are and what they do, and then I’m not shocked when I later see them in photographs getting all chummy with another con man (Trump).
But to understand it, think of those commercials you might have seen going back at least to the 80s where you see some guy on a boat, in front of a mansion, sitting on the hood of a sports car, holding wads of cash with bikini models around him, and declaring how he got rich and you can too, etc. Now, mix that with social media and an extremely gullible demographic that you can plug into 24/7 (no longer do you need to rent ad space on late night TV).
So they have podcasts, live streams (often while doing online gambling or playing video games or doing pranks, whatever gets them attention) and become the role models for a new generation of young men that I really hope grow out of it before they can do too much damage.
Anyway, getting back to the topic, I can’t imagine this is going to translate to too many actual votes or flipped states. These are people who probably don’t get off the couch (or computer chair) much. But they might answer polls. So, maybe misleading? I dunno. Just my speculation.
I hope so. But I’m predicting a high turnout election. I’m personally not counting on anyone staying home, regardless of whatever their demographics are.
Yeah, it doesn’t kill us if young men turn out in higher numbers than expected and go for Trump in a higher percentage than seems sensible to us… as long as young women turn out in MUCH higher numbers than expected… which, anecdotally, they are (see ASanders post about New Jersey above).
It’s exactly the correct term. “Machismo” implies a degree of exaggeration and performativity, as distinct from “masculinity,” which is a neutral word indicating an actual state. Trump isn’t especially masculine at all, but he sure tried to act like he is.
Anyone who votes for Trump, directly or indirectly, because of this issue should understand that Trump is a hard-line supporter of Israel, and will encourage Bibi to even more extreme actions in Gaza, towards Iran, etc.
As has been pointed out before, if you are a one issue voter and this is the issue there doesn’t look like a lot of difference. One is a hard-line supporter of Israel. The other is a hard-line supporter of Israel who tries to verbally walk a tightrope but continues to materially help the Israeli military.
The fact that the United States is a huge Israel supporter no matter who the president is should not be a surprise to any voter by now.
But if that’s your one issue it may lead you to not vote. Or vote third party. That’s sort of the point.
Nice job with the selective quote of what I was saying @Steven_Maven.
IN THE NEXT SENTENCE I said this:
Most of these voters will sit out the election or go 3rd party enabling the GOP to get it. They don’t care if it helps Trump, they have been very vocal about punishing the Democrats.
They are saying in multiple interviews the goal is to punish Democrats for being no different on Israel policy. They have convinced themselves there is NO difference. It may make no sense to us but this is why they are not voting for Harris.
Changing to loses AZ and NV and picks up NC.
I know I have shared this analysis elsewhere on these boards but it all gets mish moshed.
IF the polls by The Arab Institute and one by YouGov are taken at face value and are both accurate and predictive you are looking at an impact of significantly less than 1%. About 45K. Much less than the margin last election. Not nothing but not a lot either.
The Arab Institute has a message they are interested in delivering. We have come to accept that there is such a thing as partisan polling. The YouGov poll is weird: their sample stated that a majority of those who voted in 2020 voted for Trump, like two to one. Their nearly even Harris Trump numbers is better than that.
But accept those as truth. I’d suspect that those who say these things are like those who say they will vote third party for any other reason: most of them don’t follow through and “come home” on Election Day. They do want to say a message; they don’t want to get much worse. If they suspect they may be the tipping point vote they will weigh the cost intelligently.